


For Every Day Without You

by mirandamyth



Series: Sidelines [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dean has feelings, End of the World, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Mark of Cain, Mutual Pining, Nothing is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Winchester emotions, alternate universe - mark of cain, cas hurts, dean hurts, hurt/comfort sans comfort, just hurt, moc!dean, prayers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-01
Updated: 2016-05-25
Packaged: 2018-05-30 11:55:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6422956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirandamyth/pseuds/mirandamyth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean closes the worn and tired journal. It's been with him for the better part of three hundred years, full of one sided conversations with Castiel.<br/>Here are some of them. Intended to be read after 'For Centuries,' but can be read alone if you can infer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> IF YOU HAVE JUST CLICKED ON THIS BUT NOT READ THE SERIES IT WILL NOT MAKE AS MUCH SENSE. But it can be read alone. There are context clues. This will be a series of drabble entries as I rewatch the show. Some long, some short. Un beta'd but I proof read everything.

_Sometimes I think about my dad, Cas. He's up there with you now. Have you met him? The real him, not the alcoholic shell he was to Sammy. Even then he was still noble. Dad used to visit Sam at Stanford, did you know that? He used to check up on him. It was always about protecting Sammy when we were growing up, I was his little soldier. He didn't need to check up on me. Just Sammy. He'd come home when I was ten, fifteen, sixteen, and he'd walk right past me to Sam. He nod at my 'Hello, sir' and move past to check on Sam, hold him. All I got was a second glance  and a question about dinner._

_When I was growing up it was a Responsibility, my Responsibility, and it made me feel important, like I was noble like him. But I know now it was just my unquestioned obedience. He took me for granted, relied on me in a way he shouldn't have, and I relished it. I asked for it. I fucking wanted to be trusted like that, and look where that got me. Here, wasting my time with bees while the world falls apart. And it's my fault, all my fucking fault. If I had just... If I had... I don't know. Killed Crowley, never found Cain, we could have... We could have found a way to deal with Abbadon, a way to get through. Something. I remember telling Sammy once, how we did it. Saving people always came first. Saving people, hunting things, it was our family business._

 

Castiel can almost hear the bitter laugh in his voice, the mixture of self pity and hatred on his face as he writes. The decades old tear stains are joined by his own fresh ones. Dean had always been self depreciating, but to read it, to see it written out on paper broke Castiel's heart.

 

_We were in it to make people safer. To stop other families from becoming what we were. From breaking. That all feels so far away now. I knew why I was fighting, I knew... Saving people always came first. Always. How could I forget that, Cas? How could I... I can't get the blood off my hands, I... Everything is... Mom is up there too. I try so hard to hold on to her, to my memories of her. They're so good; so, pure and clean. Everything I'm not. So much could have been different... If I'd just let Sam stay dead, but I didn't think I could live without him, didn't think I could burn him. I was so goddamn selfish. I had just gotten him back. I wouldn't have been the Righteous Man... I should have moved on. I wouldn't have this itch in my soul begging for blood, I wouldn't be alive anymore. But had I never gone to hell, you never would have pulled me out. And not knowing you, Cas, would have been a real damn shame._

 

And isn't that just the truth? To not have known Dean Winchester would have been a shame. Castiel wouldn't have a heart to break if it wasn't for that beautiful, impossible man. His biggest regret was never telling Dean that he loved him. In the real world. Never acknowledging that Dean had said it back. The life they could have had, the joy. But instead distance and secrets and lies. He should have come to Dean that morning, taken him in his arms, stayed. Instead he continued down the path that lead to their ruination, the path that lead them here.

 

_I think about calling for you out loud, just to see a friendly face. A familiar face. But I can't imagine you want to see me again. Sometimes you're there when I dream. You walk through the curtain of red, pull me out of it, pull me home. Sometimes Sam is there, sometimes its just you and me and things are normal. I never want to wake up from those. I just want to stay there, with you, watching movies with our knees touching; eating burgers in the Impala; ribbing Sam. No crisis, no apocalypse looming. Everything seems perfect, but I can feel the Mark trying to taint them - trying to get in to those pleasant nights. Jesus, I miss you, Cas. I think about you, up there, and hope that Heaven hasn't taken you all the way back to Castiel. That you're still the feathery little nerd I know and..._

 

Love, his brain supplies. The Mark hasn't taken that from them.

 

_I love you, Castiel. More fiercely than I've loved just about anyone. But I was too chicken shit to do anything, and all we ever really had was a dream and a prayer. I would change that, if I could go back. I'd do it all the same if I had to just to change that one thing. But we'd still be here. You're an Angel, and I'm... I don't even know what I am any more. Not human, certainly. But I don't feel demonic, no flashes of black in my reflection just yet, but I can feel the Mark. And it feels evil. More evil than anything I've ever encountered. More evil than Lucifer and Abbadon and Crowley and Naomi and Purgatory combined. I'm just one man, Cas._


	2. Chapter 2

_I've given my whole life to this job, Cas. To keeping the world safe. When Sam died, the first time, when he got... I thought the world was ending. I mean, it was, but MY world was ending. With that boy laying in the dirt. Sammy face down in the dirt. My whole life I looked out for that kid. I sheltered him, kept him safe, from people, from the work we did. I tried to... I tried to keep.... Well I fucking failed, didn't I? Over and over again. In the end, it was me that killed him. I know Metadouche dealt the death blow, but if I never... If I had just stayed with him, he wouldn't have been looking for me, he wouldn't have... I know he wouldn't still be alive today, he'd be long dead, but I could have been there, with him.  He could have lived to a ripe old age. We could have quit hunting. Things could have been different. So much could have been different. But I was — I_ _AM weak. I thought I was strong once, but that was before you knew me. Before Sammy died. Before I had to watch my baby brother get stabbed in the back. Everything got so fucked up after that. Well, it was always fucked up, but not in the same way. That day I spent with his body is still the hardest thing I've ever done. To see my little brother — my Sammy, cold and lifeless in some ghost town — it broke me. He was mine, Cas, my life, my responsibility. It was always me that was there for him, when he scraped his knees or needed help with shoelaces, me who kept him out of the life for as long as I possibly could, even though he was one curious little shit. Stubborn, too, but I think he comes by that honest. Everything I had worked for my whole life just, poof, gone, snuffed out like a candle. Nothing has ever hurt worse. In hell or on earth._ _I never did thank you, for building Sam a pyre. For doing right by him when I couldn't. Even now it's a comfort to me that Sam had you looking out for him, watching his back. I never once blamed you for his death, though. I know he does-didn't like feeling like he was being watched, and he could be slippery. You don't expect it from a guy his size, how sneaky he could be._

Castiel remembers the effort, remembers hauling wood and stacking it next to Sam's body, remembers the crisp smell of the dried pine boughs he'd layered underneath for kindling, remembers the grief that motivated him. It was one of the most difficult days of his considerably long life. He'd built it like Dean would have, with his hands and strength, no mojo, no help. He remembers placing Sam's linen wrapped body atop the mount, remembers wiping the blood from his face first, cleaning him up so that he looks like he's sleeping, if you stand at the right angle or ignore the way his left eyelid caves in unnaturally. He remembers placing a photo of the brothers in Sam's left hand and crossing it over the scarred knuckles of his right. Remembers the way the wounds hadn't scabbed over, merely dried up, skin stretching open, blood flaking on his hands and stiffening on his shirt. He remembers filling Sam's mouth with salt, covering his chest and legs in it before wrapping him in the large white cloth and kneeling to pray. He remembers asking a father he's not sure still cares to forgive Sam his trespasses, to allow him to be cleansed as all sinners are cleansed in the blood of the lamb, to allow his soul peace in heaven. He remembers the dead weight and the soulless lightness of the body, remembers the carrying Sam home, and bathing him, changing him out of his soiled clothing. He remembers the scent of death that lingered on his skin and in his nostrils for days afterward. He remembers Sam's death echo, the screaming, gurgling, choking, silence, repeat, for days before he breaks through to him, before he can convince him to move on. He remembers the look on Sam's face when he realizes it's Cas, not Dean shaking him out of the cycle. He remembers Sam never forgetting to have pie in the bunker, for when Dean comes back, for when Sam finally saves him. He remembers Sam drunk and swearing at him, asking why Cas couldn't save Dean, he remembers Sam collapsing minutes later as sobs wrack his body. He remembers his friend, Sam; the gentle-hearted giant, the mischievous little brother, the hero.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey I'm sorry for breaking all of your hearts. Just know I'm breaking my own.

_Sam walked in on me once, with a man. Well, with a man and a woman. The year before I went to hell, and man, Cas, did I live it up. I mean, yeah, it was babes, booze, and burgers before that, but with a year to live, I really kicked it up a notch. Growing up with my dad, I never really had a chance to explore my options, to, you know,  sample all the items on the buffet. But that year, I tried it all. It was.... I realized that I'd been ignoring some stuff... A few truths about myself. That year was the first time I was truly free. One of the only times I've_ ever _been truly free. And after... After I got out... After you pulled me out, I made myself forget what it was like, because I had a mission, it was the end of the world. I could do without freedom, without the complication. But damn, Castiel, after a while I started remembering, wanting. In all my years I never thought I'd find myself lusting after an angel. Christ, I spent the better part of thirty years believing you didn't exist. I don't think it was until after I met the guy, but I figured out it wasn't Jimmy Novak that was all that hot, it was just you, Cas. I think you could have been an eighty year old woman and I would have found you sexy as hell. And then Zach sends me into some bullshit future, where you're hosting orgies in the apocalypse, and let me tell you, that was an eye opener. I almost came on to you right then and there, but it was wrong, all wrong — you were so hopeless, so... you were still you, but I was... That version of me treated everyone like shit, like they were disposable, fucking  diversions that he would betray by being too goddamn weak to shoot the devil. Even if he was wearing Sam to the prom. It's funny that, of all the possible futures, this is the one we wound up with. Me, alone, staring down the dark side of eternity. After everything; the demon blood, my deal, Purgatory, the Cage: I'm the one alive with freakish power and Sam is nothing but salt and ashes. I'm getting melancholy again, and this was supposed to be... I'm not doing very good with happy, anymore._


	4. Chapter 4

_They say absolute power corrupts, Cas. I think you and I know a little about absolute corruption, don't we? I mean you ate purgatory, and I... I've lost count now of how many people I've killed. How many people I've tortured, how many I've hurt. Funny that I used to stop you from smiting first and asking questions later. That I forgot demon meatsuits and angel vessels were people themselves, before. I just told myself it was for the greater good, that those demons had to die so the world would live. But this mark just showed me the truth. That deep down I like the sound of a knife twisting through someone's liver makes. That I enjoy the feeling of hot blood on my hands. Did you ever feel like that, Cas? When you slaughtered angels, did you enjoy it?_

Castiel remembers the sick sort of pride that had filled him on that eternal Tuesday afternoon surrounded by Raphael's followers. He remembers how the air grew acrid with the odor of spent grace. That ozone and fresh lightning smell of angels coupled with the charred scent of burning feathers. He remembers feeling victorious and powerful. The wrongness did not come until much later, with remorse. He remembers the wrong everyday as he trails along behind Dean, he remembers the wrong as he lays hands on a little girl, gut shot, on the outskirts of a recent battle. He feels the weight lessen as he heals this child, carries her back to her sobbing mother, as he breaks bread with them, sharing the little food they have with the man who saved their daughter's life, the miracle man. Castiel knows of the story that precedes them, the righteous warrior and the healer. Always one after the other, never together.


End file.
